Elk and bison carcasses in Yellowstone, USA

This dataset contains all data on which the following publication below is based. Paper Citation: Risch, A.C., Frossard, A., Schütz, M., Frey, B., Morris, A.W., Bump, J.K. (accepted) Effects of elk and bison carcasses on soil microbial communities and ecosystem functions in Yellowstone, USA. (accepted). Functional Ecology doi: ... Methods Study area and study sites This study was conducted in YNP’s Northern Range (NR), located in north-western Wyoming and south-western Montana, USA (~44.9163° N, 110.4169° W). The NR expands over ~1000 km2 and features long cold winters and short dry summers. Grasslands and shrublands dominate the NR that is the home of large migratory herds of bison (winter counts 2017: ~3919 individuals; Geremia, Wallen, & White, 2017) and elk (~5349 individuals) as well as their main predators, approximately five packs of wolves with a total of 33 individuals (Smith et al., 2017). As part of a long-term research program within YNP, wolf predation has been studied since their reintroduction in 1995. For our study, we received ground-truthed coordinates of bison and elk carcasses from winter 2016/17 (November 2016 through April 2017) from the YNP Wolf Project. Be